Double Continental One Pass Miles for Gas, Groceries, and Dining April 13 til June 13

The Nomad reports this on the UnRoadWarrior blog, and I recall Katy getting a snail mail piece on the same promotion. This is a nice bump for all of us with the Continental OnePass card.

The promotion dates are April 13th through June 13th. Registration is not required, according to the Nomad. If someone kept the snail mail piece I’m sure our other readers would be interested in what it says.

These are our three biggest spend categories and for two months I can certainly use a few more UA/CO frequent flier miles.

All my other spending will stay on the good old Starwood Preferred Guest card unless I end up getting another card or two that have minimum spend requirements.

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The truly frugal way is to forget the hotels and enroll in home exchange. Hotels are often unfriendly, business like environments that force you to spend more money on resturants and eat unhealthy food!To save even more money couch surf, and to do a good deed host couch surfers! You often get to see the world and your city through new eyes.

Calvin

I've got plenty of priority club points that can easily be booked for others. Have any "mutual gifting" ideas? 🙂

jammanxc

do the American Airlines "use miles for hotels" .. you can set the bar so you can use minimum 1,000 miles and cash…. instead of cash & points like SPG, it's cash & 1,000 minimum miles… REALLY easy! sometimes you can find a gem 🙂

Dr. Bob

As far as hotel points – the Chase Sapphire card currently lets you transfer points to 3 hotel chains, Marriott, Priority Club & Hyatt. They had a first use sign up bonus (may still do?) of 25,000 points. Not worth a lot, maybe a night or two.

The Nomad

As far as mutual gifting is concerned, Hyatt lets you transfer points between accounts for free.

Apart from that have you tried the hotel redemption awards with miles? I have tried dummy bookings with AA miles and they offer pretty good value: at least 1 cent/mile.

To earn hotel points I have found priority club to be the easiest. Almost everyone is targeted for the 80K bonus points offer; enough for 2 nights at any ICs. This will also make you a Priority club platinum. As a platinum, I haven't yet earned less than 8K PC points per night. Sometimes even for $49 hotel stays!

Bacc

We have 1.7 million airmiles and are very short on hotel miles. I second the motion about couch surfing and broaden it to other hospitality exchange groups. As a senior couple, we've met great people as hosts and guests and become insiders in many places in the world. I use it as part of my lodging options, plus (in Western countries) I add hostels (private rooms only), sometimes timeshare exchange. I try to stay at hotels which are indigenous to the area. Since we travel with exchange rate in mind we have stayed at some luxurious places at Super8 prices.

gryphon

I only have a few nights at the Hilton, Marriott and tons of Starwood, of course. And then there are the 440,000 Capital One points, which I believe are good for hotels. Or $4,400 in gift cards; whatever you prefer!

Anonymous

Instead of hotels I looked for an apartment. An apartment that sleeps 4 people in the heart of Lisbon cost 315 dollars for 4 nights. Can't get much cheaper than that.

On the other hand apartments aren't good for short trips and the owners can revoke your security fee if they think that you have damaged the place.

Anonymous

Interesting and timely post. I need 4 or 5 nights at a Marriott end of this month and I have no Marriott points at all. There is a convention there for a few of those days and they want almost $200/nt. Like you, I have a zillion SPG, Delta, and other various airline miles that are worthless in hotels.

Looking foward to somebody's solution!!

Anonymous

I use my Starwood Amex for virtually all of my spending (unless I'm trying to hit a spending target for a particular Airline card offer) and I'm usually good to go. On top of that, I focus my business travel on Starwood and Hilton and make sure to use the appropriate credit card for those stays.

Using that strategy, I've got nearly 100,000 Hilton and 100,000 Starwood points and that's after using a bunch of Hilton points for a 4-night stay in Times Square.

Anonymous

Transfer miles through Amtrak's program to get points for Choice hotels? You need an Amtrak credit card, though…

Coloradodude

Anonymous

If you have a zillion delta miles look into using them for your Marriott. Try the Delta travelmarketplace link below, similar to AA's, but not as good as AA's

One advantage that you have with Gold Points (by Radisson-which includes Country Inns, Park Inn, and Park Plaza) is that you can transfer GP from one account to another at NO cost. So you can put those points in someone other account in a mutual gift situation. Radisson has many fine 5 star hotels comparable to the Hilton's and Marriots.

Anonymous

My husband and I have started couchsurfing as well and have had wonderful experiences where we've met great people. That said there are times when we'd rather be alone in a hotel and I'm still very new to learning about the hotel points side of things (as opposed to the airline miles). I would welcome any tips b/c the best things I know of so far are the bonuses for opening credit cards and the Priority Club cancellation idea you mentioned. Thanks for all your work!

-mc

TR

Your double or triple points Cap One card is an option if you have a pretty big monthly spend.

ez005799

One year ago I was in a similar situation with no hotel points at all and a bit of surplus air miles (not as many as you) I always noticed that when planning out a trip hotels tend to cost more than the airfare. I like flying in J but I always use coach fares for my comparison since I would not pay for a J seat. So I signed up for the free Hilton visa and amex. There are currently 30K and 50k bonus for just spend on these cards and no annual fee. I then made the Hilton amex my goto card including my recurring cell phone bills and tv service, plus all the 6 points per dollar at grocery stores and 3 points per dollar on coins every once in a while. I went from zero to over 300k in one year including a few paid stays for weekend holiday travel. Hilton had a good promo last 4th quarter that included 4X points on stays that included Sundays.

Bikeguy

Mrs. Bikeguy puts up with a lot of my travel eccentricities, like flying to London from Detroit through Houston (we were in C). And she rarely comments negatively. I had us booked into a hostel on the California coast, sleeping in a lighthouse. I will never forget the look on her face when she found out to access the bathroom required a walk outside.

I was told never to book a room like that again.

Charles Clarke

I'm not sure that these are great deals, but you may be able to cut your cost of hotel stays with the American Express Discover America deals.

Can you comment or point to you article about Expedia best price match guarantee? What is it and why does it take time?

Anonymous

I'm in the same boat Rick!

The hotel signup bonuses just aren't as valuable as the miles signup bonuses lately, so i've ended up with just over 1 million FF miles, and just a few measly Hyatt points.

The 2 night Hyatt card promo is not bad if you use it for a super nice Hyatt, but i would rather prefer a promo from Hyatt of 4 nights in a Category 3 or lower, than 2 nights in any category. Hotel signup bonuses aren't just worth as much. Sure you can get over $1000 worth of "value" from the Hyatt 2 nights, but the flexibility to get that $1000 worth of value is thin, since you have to redeem at Hyatt Tokyo or something to get the real bang for your buck. Whereas, a 100k BA promo will get me a number of flexible choices. I hope the hotel sign up bonuses will get more creative, so they provide more flexibility like the example i gave above. Otherwise there just not worth going after until you have tapped out all your FF signup bonus options first.

wise2u

I used AA miles to book Sheraton princess Keaulani in waikiki last month…it was cheaper than using SPG points!!! (even considering 1.25 spg value) we used points to book high floor room and were very happy…it may have been a fluke or a special offer because AA had just started doing hotels for points, but they were noticably cheaper than using UA or other airline points for the same properties….also much cheaper for rental cars but didnt include taxes and fees which accounted for a third of the cost.

wise2u

Discover america promotion is a good value to stock up on a few different hotel points. I plan on getting more choice points to add to the 160k I got last year (i plan to use them at Barcello resorts at a redemtion of 20k per night, this includes All inclusive benefits for 2 people)I also got Wyndham points last year for cheap. I am considering getting Hyatt CC deal, also was targeted for priority club 80k and free night CC offer….add capital one bonanza frome getting personal and business for wife and myself at 100k per card and 4 spg 30k bonuses from last year and we have a great balance of hotel and FF points.

Frequent flyer junkie

I don't know if this is the most cost effective way to get Starwood points, but we purchased 2 starwood properties, years ago, and now get a new plethera of points each January, (after I pay the homeowners fees!) You could look into this. I mostly just use starwood points for miles and cash when staying at starwood owned properties, since they are more valuable than most points when transferring them

Coloradodude

I agree with ez005799. I use Hilton Amex as my go to card. I have all my bills charged to the card and get 1 week a year in Hawaii free, or about 10 nights at Embassy suites, or Hampton's a year

More Hilton properties out west here than Marriott or SPG.

Anonymous

Rick –

I had the following "Crack the Case" promotion:

1. Stay at 2 brands2. Stay 2 Saturdays3. Opt in for emails4. Take a survey5. Stay 10 Nights6. Sign up for the PC Visa

5/6 got me a 90k bonus. I knew I wouldn't get the 10 nights, so when I got an offer for an PC Visa with 80k, I did it. 90k + 80K = 170k points.

34 free nights at a point breaks night! Or 4.25 free nights at a Intercontinental hotel.

Keith

Rick,

Others have referenced it…and I'm going to do the same. Use AA miles for hotels. We are looking at a week long stay in Dallas this summer. Mile redemptions start as low as 44,000 AA miles for a 7 day stay (Quality Inn).

MYRflyer

I agree with many others, use AA miles for hotel/car. Very good conversions imho

Anonymous

The Crack the Case promo is by far the best game going. I was not targeted but called PC and managed to have them set both my wife and I up.

1. Stay at 2 brands2. Stay 2 Saturdays3. Opt in for emails4. Take a survey5. Stay 10 Nights6. Sign up for the PC Visa

Went for the Visa x 2 over 10 nights. 350k points later I'm set! The Visa has two nice features that make the $49 fee (waived first year) worth keeping – 10% reduction on all point awards and a free night voucher every year (not during your first year). PC values point at .6 cents so a 100k point award resulting in a 10k point savings pays for the card! I'm assuming I can use the voucher at ICs if not I have plenty of beach front CPs and HIs in Florida that run $175+ a night.

mberlew

This has been publicized on FT. For those who got in on the recent Cap One "Match your miles" promotion, there are redemption options of 51,250 points for $900 in gift cards for either Hyatt, Fairmont, Ritz-Carlton, or Raffles. That is valuing the credit at 1.75 cents/point, which is better than their standard value of 1 cent/point on all other travel purchases or their gift cards. These redemption options are listed under "Events and Experiences" on the Cap One rewards site, not under gift cards which would have been more logical.

Isaac

I was thinking about this same problem recently as well. My thought is that if I get desperate for hotel points I may end up signing up for the two Hawaiian Airlines visas. They transfer 1:2 into hhonors points and aren't part of any of the big banks I have most of my credit with. Doing this will effectively buy 140,000 hhonors points for $158. (Annual fees not waived.)

jmw2323

built up my PC points with the cancel the cash and points reservation. Some on purpose, some not. Signed the wife up for CC with 60K PC points bonus. Signed myself up for CC with 80K PC points bonus. Now have close to 200k PC points between the 2 of us

sortaconfused

So Rick, what did you decide to do to build up some hotel points? Please keep us updated!

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